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Thread: What Made Early Humans Smart

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    What Made Early Humans Smart

    What Made Early Humans Smart, subtitled "Walking upright made our ancestors easy prey. It also made them get smart," is a rambling interview of Jeremy DeSilva, an anthropologist at Dartmouth College. The interviewer is funny at times, holding as he does a standard pedestrian view of evolution (no pun intended).

    I'll grab a few parts of the interview.

    What are the most popular wrong scientific explanations for why humans walk upright?

    As new evidence is discovered, we always can change our minds, right? But one wrong idea that’s still with us—the basis of 2001: A Space Odyssey—is we were a violent species from the get-go and evolved bipedalism to free our hands for weaponry....

    That famous image is called “March of Progress.” Tell us about it.

    “March of Progress” was an illustration done by a Russian artist, Rudolph Zallinger, in a 1965 Time-Life book called Early Man. It’s this beautiful foldout that shows ancient apes down on all fours, and it has them slowly rising up to modern humans. At the time, with the fossils we had, you could create a narrative like that. But in the last half century we’ve made so many amazing discoveries that show the human family tree is much more diverse. The pace of evolutionary change is quite different and it turns out that upright walking is the earliest of these evolutionary changes. The earliest bipeds on the ground were evolving from things that were upright to begin with in trees. Really all that happened was an ecological change....

    It’s a misnomer, isn’t it, to think only one hominin existed at a time?

    It is. One of the things we’re learning from new fossil discoveries is there appears to be these different species of early human, or hominin, coexisting on the landscape with different anatomies or adaptations in their feet and legs....

    How do paleoanthropologists know early hominins were cooperative?

    One of the best pieces of evidence we have is a fossil of an individual who’s broken a leg bone, a femur. This is long before hospitals, doctors, casts, anything like that. The beauty of the fossil is you can see a healed fracture. Imagine 2 million years ago, you break your leg. There’s no way you should survive. But a hominin did. The key word is healed. He survived that trauma. I don’t think he could have done that alone.

    Did bipedalism lead to cooperation?

    I think so....

    Maybe it’s better to say cooperation is a byproduct of being a vulnerable biped.

    That’s exactly right....

    Energy is a zero-sum game, right? There’s only so much energy available and the body allocates it to the most demanding organs?

    That’s right. One of the hypotheses about brain growth is derived from what’s called the “expensive tissue hypothesis.” Energy is allocated to the brain, but where are you getting that energy from? The argument is the digestive system. Essentially the intestines reduce in volume, and by reducing that expensive tissue, you’re able to allocate more energy to a larger brain....

    Is there a larger message about evolutionary biology in our anatomical problems?

    Yes, and it comes back to what we were talking about before. Humans buffer themselves with culture. Is natural selection still operating on humans? Absolutely. It has for the last 6 million years. Our foot anatomy may be suboptimal and lead to problems. But we solve our problems culturally and socially....
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    Interesting article in this weeks "Epoch Times" newspaper regarding the fallacy of evolution. It points out that many of our "break through" discoveries were questionable at best being bits and pieces of bones. Peking Man for example was nothing more than the finding of several teeth!

    I don't believe the earth was created in six days six thousand years ago but I am not a strong believer that every thing on the planet was formed from mutations of earlier life forms.

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    Quote Originally Posted by nathanbforrest45 View Post
    Interesting article in this weeks "Epoch Times" newspaper regarding the fallacy of evolution. It points out that many of our "break through" discoveries were questionable at best being bits and pieces of bones. Peking Man for example was nothing more than the finding of several teeth!

    I don't believe the earth was created in six days six thousand years ago
    but I am not a strong believer that every thing on the planet was formed from mutations of earlier life forms.
    Why not?
    Call your state legislators and insist they approve the Article V convention of States to propose amendments.


    I pledge allegiance to the Constitution as written and understood by this nation's founders, and to the Republic it created, an indivisible union of sovereign States, with liberty and justice for all.

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    Quote Originally Posted by nathanbforrest45 View Post
    Interesting article in this weeks "Epoch Times" newspaper regarding the fallacy of evolution. It points out that many of our "break through" discoveries were questionable at best being bits and pieces of bones. Peking Man for example was nothing more than the finding of several teeth!

    I don't believe the earth was created in six days six thousand years ago but I am not a strong believer that every thing on the planet was formed from mutations of earlier life forms.
    Mr. Garrison can explain it better.

    Today we live. Tomorrow we die
    Evil is da Devil minus da D.

    "Evil is powerless if the good aren’t afraid"- Ronald Reagan

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    Quote Originally Posted by nathanbforrest45 View Post
    Interesting article in this weeks "Epoch Times" newspaper regarding the fallacy of evolution. It points out that many of our "break through" discoveries were questionable at best being bits and pieces of bones. Peking Man for example was nothing more than the finding of several teeth!

    I don't believe the earth was created in six days six thousand years ago but I am not a strong believer that every thing on the planet was formed from mutations of earlier life forms.

    Sounds like God of gaps.

    But certainly the science keeps being revised as new fossils are discovered. Here, the notion we evolved from a common knuckle-dragging ancestor is disputed by findings.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    Quote Originally Posted by MisterVeritis View Post
    Why not?

    Logic. Where are the direct connections between lower and higher lifeforms? I refuse to believe every living thing on the planet is nothing more than bad genes and mutations.

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    Quote Originally Posted by HawkTheSlayer View Post
    Mr. Garrison can explain it better.



    Sounds right to me

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    Quote Originally Posted by nathanbforrest45 View Post
    Logic. Where are the direct connections between lower and higher lifeforms? I refuse to believe every living thing on the planet is nothing more than bad genes and mutations.
    Mutation is just one part of evolution, there are also selection and replication.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    Quote Originally Posted by nathanbforrest45 View Post
    Logic. Where are the direct connections between lower and higher lifeforms? I refuse to believe every living thing on the planet is nothing more than bad genes and mutations.
    That is not logic.

    Do you agree that genetics results in variability in offspring?
    Do you agree there is competition for mates?
    Do you agree that resources are insufficient to allow every organism to mate, reproduce, and live long enough to themselves reproduce?
    Do you agree that our environments vary from place to place with some warmer, others cooler, some wetter, some drier?

    Do you disagree that the organisms that best fit their environment while they are alive are the ones who leave more offspring?

    What would you expect to happen?
    Last edited by MisterVeritis; 07-03-2021 at 05:38 PM.
    Call your state legislators and insist they approve the Article V convention of States to propose amendments.


    I pledge allegiance to the Constitution as written and understood by this nation's founders, and to the Republic it created, an indivisible union of sovereign States, with liberty and justice for all.

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    Why did we become smarter? I believe it is possibly because we began to live in large groups. We needed to know who was a friend and who was not. I also believe it is because children needed to sing.
    Call your state legislators and insist they approve the Article V convention of States to propose amendments.


    I pledge allegiance to the Constitution as written and understood by this nation's founders, and to the Republic it created, an indivisible union of sovereign States, with liberty and justice for all.

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